LORD SALISBURY SPEAKS OUT.
TORD SALISBURY did well on Friday week in J making his statement about the war in the Soudan. The kind of informal arrangement which ever since the death of Lord Palmerston has confined the Foreign Secretaryship to Peers is on the whole probably a wise one. It is difficult enough for a constitutional Govern- ment to conduct its foreign business at all, it is so hampered by the necessity of always deferring to an opinion which is of necessity usually ignorant, but to conduct delicate negotiations under a shower of questions, often indiscreet and occasionally malicious, is very nearly impossible. It is very easy, it will be said, to refuse to answer, but not infrequently, and that in the most acute crises, a refusal is precisely the answer which it is most embarrassing or even disastrous to be compelled to make. Are you to be silent when asked if you have been threatened with a war? The Peers, on the other hand, are rarely indiscreet, and never pertinacious ; they are anxious not to impede public business more than they can help, and being all men of society, a whisper will often stop a debate just when it would have been most injurious to the public interest. Nevertheless it is not to be denied that the system has its inconveniences. The House of Commons rules, it will ask questions, and when the Foreign Secretary is a Peer the answers have constantly to be given either by a colleague or a deputy, neither of whom quite understands what is going on, and both of whom are possessed with the fear of being indiscreet. The answers, therefore, are sometimes a little too careful, and the House of Commons receives an impression that it is being treated with distrust, and becomes in con- sequence either suspicious or, when the question involves demands for money, even hostile. Members do not know what to say to constituents, and fret under an ignorance which is occasionally only accidental. It is far better that a Foreign Secretary should speak for himself, should run a little risk of harsh criticism abroad, and should, so far as he dare, take the whole nation into his confidence. If the nation responds, his powers of action are indefinitely increased, and, after all, the instances in which the nation has not responded are exceedingly few. We are happy to record that Lord Salisbury has perceived this, and has made on a most complex and difficult subject what is for a Foreign Minister an exceedingly frank and explanatory speech. The British Government intends to reconquer Dongola in any case, and to reconquer Khartoum if Egypt is able to provide, or, as we understand him, if the British people are by-and-by willing to provide, the money. For the present they are only going to Dongola, because of all the provinces in the south which Egypt possessed when we took her in charge, Dongola is the most accessible and the most rich. Lord Salisbury, however, makes no secret either of his wishes or his intentions when circumstances are favourable. He wishes to reconquer Khartoum, and indeed the entire " Soudan," or at least as much of it as has ever belonged to Egypt, a description which includes Wadelai and practically the whole valley of the Nile down to the Lakes. He thinks that, as trustees for Egypt, we ought not to have given up her provinces, and intends in her name and with her resources to reconquer them. He selects this year for the expedition, because the Dervish attack on the Italians, at a moment when the latter had suffered a great disaster, made the Khalifa more formidable, the tribes of the Soudan having a hankering to follow a conqueror; but his desire for the enterprise is permanent, and independent of any acci- dental conjuncture of circumstances. It is, in fact, in his judgmentis the of the steady policy which, as guardian of i Egypt, it s the duty of the British Government to pursue, and will be as imperative five years hence, if we are still in Egypt, as it is to-day. That is an exceedingly bold utterance, one which if it were pronounced by Prince Hohenlohe, or M. Hanotaux, or even Mr. Cleveland, would be described as audacious in its frankness. Recollect the situation in which Lord Salisbury is placed. Abroad the French are declaring through every organ of opinion that the expedition to Don gola " masks " a design against Khartoum, that the British intend to " possess themselves " of the Nile, and that this advance of the "ever-rapacious Power" implies that England will never leave Egypt, and threatens the " future expansion of France," and more especially her reversionary right to acquire the Congo State. At home the Radicals are saying the same thing in a different form, alleging that the advance to Dongola is " only a blind," that Lord Salisbury means to reconquer the Soudan, and that Great Britain is being committed to a, vast and ill- defined enterprise by which her reputation and resources are alike endangered, and for which she cannot in any event enjoy any adequate return. Lord Salisbury meets those charges without hesitation, without evasion, without even that diplomatic caution which, considering that the Khalifs still reigns in Khar- toum, no Court in Europe would deem misplaced, by a simple acknowledgment that as regards their basis of fact they are well founded. We are going to Dongola because Dongola is on the road to Khartoum. " We give to the commander a full and free hand to take such measures as he may think necessary for carrying out the campaign. The end of it is Dongola ; but I do not for a. moment desire to conceal that in selecting this particular plan of operations we have looked further than Dongola. Dongola has many advantages, and one of its advantages is that it is on the road to Khartoum." How could the boldest of Radical orators be more frank or more distinct ? The British Premier will conquer on behalf of Egypt, and therefore leave administration to the Egyptian Govern- ment, and he will move slowly because Egypt is not rich and is not yet the free mistress of her own resources, but what he intends is to recover for her Khartoum, which is the effective governing centre of the whole Soudan. The French, or the Radicals, or anybody else may raise all the shrieks they please, but that is the policy of the British Government.
Whether this is a wise policy or not is a matter for dis- cussion, but to say that it is a veiled policy, or a tricky policy, or a haphazard policy is, after this speech, palpably foolish as well as untrue. Where is the trick ? or the secrecy ? The French are informed in the clearest, not to say the most audacious, manner of the end which the British are pursuing. The Khalifs is warned as clearly as the Foreign Office knows how to warn him, that the Egyptians and their British allies will take his capital if they can. And the Radicals in Parliament are informed that this is the permanent design of the party now in power, to be carried out the very moment it is convenient, and without reference to anything except the possession of means available for the operation. The declaration is frank to imprudence, could not be franker if the Opposition had drawn up its terms, or had extracted an avowal by means of incessant interpellation. That frankness we feel well assured is wise. The French will not be more irritated than they were, for nothing that we can do will irritate them so much as the things they suspect us of doing ; the Khalifa will be no stronger, for Lord Salisbury's avowal will rather cow than encourage his followers, and arin every internal enemy against him ; and the .Radicals will be compelled to attack the policy as a policy and not secret plan for pursuing adventures "behind the back or Parliament," which for months past has been their in- cessantly repeated charge. As a policy they will of course assail it, but, if we understand the English mode of thinking, they will fail. The English like adventure ; they especially prefer adventures which promise to repair former defeats ; and they are most of all attracted by adventures which have in them a trace of disinterested nobleness or, if the Radicals like the phrase better, of disinterested Quixotry. It is not thirty years since they spent eleven millions, and traversed " the mountains of Rasselas," in order to rescue men whom they did not care about, but who were entitled to receive, and had received, the British safe-conduct. They will consider that to restore to Egypt provinces which we ordered her to surrender, to assure her, as part of our guardianship, against the possibility of savage in- vasion, and to break up the power of a Mussulman despot who ruins every province he touches, whose " wars " are slave-hunting raids, and whose only sceptre is an execu- tioner's axe, is a thoroughly justifiable piece of work, not worth, perhaps, the human suffering to be caused by a European war, but well worth a moderate expenditure, whether of life or treasure or energy. We do not believe that from the true people of this country there will be any opposition of the serious or heartfelt kind, while foreign opposition is hampered by a difficulty which has only just begun to attract attention. That opposition must take the form of resisting the application of Egyptian revenues to conquest in the South, and if it is successful it will produce this strange result, that England will produce the money, and, having produced it, will be entitled to security for its repayment. That is, she will either keep Khartoum and the Soudan for her- self as having been purchased by her own treasury, or she will be the first creditor of Egypt, or, in other words, she, as possessor of the Soudan, will be mistress of the destinies of Egypt, or she, as the creditor of Egypt, will have a fresh reason for insisting that Egypt must remain under civilised administration. French statesmen are much too shrewd, especially in matters of business, not to perceive where such a policy will land them, and will, we doubt not, prefer, when the hour for discussion arrives, that Egypt shall be aggrandised at her own expense, and therefore be better able to demand that she be allowed to walk in future without a go-cart. Nothing in French policy is affected by the extension of Egyptian territory, for the object of that policy is not that Egypt shall be small, but that Egypt shall be under French in- fluence instead of the influence of Great Britain. We do not believe that Lord Salisbury's speech will in the least impede his agents' action, while it will produce through- out the constituencies the just, and much-needed, impres- sion that the Government seeks nothing for which it is either ashamed or afraid to ask their previous sanction.
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